NCMP Leong Mun Wai delivered his closing speech remarks after Parliament voted in favour of the amended Hawker Centre Motion. In his speech, he stressed safeguarding Singapore’s hawker culture and ensuring fair livelihoods for hawkers amid rising costs, manpower shortages, and corporatisation. He also called for abolishing the social enterprise model, revising tender and rental systems, allowing hawkers to hire foreign workers, and avoiding discount costs imposed on hawkers, urging the government to adopt these measures to sustain the hawker trade for future generations.
Mr Speaker, Sir,
I would like to thank first of all, all the officeholders and Members who participated in this debate.
I also thank the WP for supporting most of the points that PSP has raised.
I am glad that based on the amended Motion put forward by Mr Edward Chia, all of us have agreed on the importance of safeguarding our hawker culture, which is an important national institution and cultural inheritance, and the need to provide help to our hawkers to continue to provide good and affordable food and earn a fair livelihood at the same time.
I thank Senior Minister of State Koh for the very comprehensive explanation of the Government policies – I indeed learned a lot from it. However, I think to summarise my concerns, there are these following issues which I think if the Government does not tackle further, the prospects and livelihoods of our hawkers will not improve that much and will threaten the sustainability of our hawker culture on the long term. So, I hope the Government will continue to consider these four points that I raised.
Firstly, about the social enterprise model, I think so far, we are still not sure what is the actual contribution made by the social enterprise model, vis a vis the problems that the model has brought about. In PSP’s view, we think that the corporatised culture of a social enterprise model is actually not compatible with the free sole proprietor spirit of individual hawkers.
And if you take into consideration the possibility of conflict of interest between the private operator and he operating a social enterprise hawker centre, we are of the view that it may be better off for experienced civil servants of the hawker centres group to actually provide more help to the management of the hawker centres. That is one of our points and that is why we say, bring the whole thing up as the new Government agency, Hawker Singapore.
The second point, while we appreciate the advantages that Senior Minister of State Koh has shared with us about the tender system, there is still an unanswered question as to why is there a need for the system to also cater for a renewal system that is so peculiar, specifically, a high tender bid will be reduced to a lower Assessed Market Rent after the initial three years. Is it not better off to have a system whereby the bidder continues to pay as he bid? Or after three years, a new bidding again for the same stall.
So, we still think that this kind of tender system did contribute to the escalating prices in our HDB coffee shops and food courts. And that is one of the major cause of escalating cooked food prices in the long run.
The third point, we also disagree that while you allow the coffee shops and the food courts to employ Work Permit holders, you do not allow the individual hawkers to do so. In doing so, you are putting them at a disadvantage. And in order for us to preserve the distinctive Singaporean character of our hawker culture, we must ensure the individual hawkers are competitive vis a vis the corporatised hawkers. If you disallow that to the individual hawkers, then you continue to make them the underdogs.
My last point, you may have a lot of competing objectives, but to impose budget meals and discounts to hawker meals, imposing the cost on the hawkers is an objective that you can do without.
Those are my main points that I would like to say.
Sir, in closing, two months ago, we debated a Bill for an important group of essential workers that deserve our attention – the platform workers. I regard our local hawkers as another group of workers essential to the functioning of our society that really need our attention. Exemplified by many of my Chinatown neighbours in the past, our Pioneer hawkers started off as humble folks who just want to earn enough to feed their families. They worked very hard but are satisfied with getting meagre profits. As a result, we were able to enjoy cheap and good hawker food for a long time.
Today, in the 21st century, hawkers are facing tremendous headwinds, with high rental, shortage of manpower, unfair competition and increasing constraints from corporatisation, and also the persistent societal expectations to provide cheap and good food. This situation is not sustainable. At the rate we are going, our traditional hawker culture which is based on the hard work and enterprise of individual hawkers will slowly wither away.
Corporatisation of the hawker trade is a natural development of the market economy, but we can ensure a more level playing field for our individual hawkers to thrive and flourish. The current pride of our hawkers is at least partly due to the policies by the Government. The onus is now on the Government to consider our suggestions to provide better support for hawkers in the future.
Sir, having made my points clear, the PSP is ready to support the amended Motion, which is not too different from the original Motion tabled by me. This is to show that this House is united in our support for hawkers.
Sir, I beg to move, as quickly as possible, please.
